Will the IPCC Be Ready to Communicate About Its Fifth Assessment Report?

Will the IPCC Be Ready to Communicate About Its Fifth Assessment Report?

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the world authority on the science of climate. But at the same time, it has been increasingly beset by controversies that call into question its approach, and its preparedness, when it comes to communication.

Essentially, the IPCC releases highly technical reports, fairly infrequently, that get an initial flurry of mainstream media attention and then get attacked viciously until the next report comes out. And when attacked, IPCC has opted for an ill advised strategy of “hunkering down,” as Andrew Revkin puts it. Indeed, following “GlacierGate”—when a very real error was found in one of IPCC’s reports—IPCC came off as defensive and was very slow to admit the mistake.

Following the various “-Gates” of 2009 and 2010, a cry went out in many circles that we need to improve climate science communication. As a result, all kinds of communication innovations are now going forward, many of which are ably summarized by Revkin in a recent article in the Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization (which was central to creating the IPCC itself in 1988).

But where does IPCC fit in the context of this innovation wave? It still seems to be dragging. Revkin reports the following:

As the IPCC prepares its Fifth Assessment Report, it does so with what, to my eye, appears to be an utterly inadequate budget for communicating its findings and responding in an agile way to nonstop public scrutiny facilitated by the Internet. I would love to think that the countries that created the climate panel could also contribute to boosting the panel’s capacity for transparency, responsiveness and outreach.

I made this point recently in an e-mail exchange with three leaders of the climate panel’s next assessment – the chairman, Rajendra K. Pachauri, and Thomas Stocker and Christopher Field, scientists respectively co-leading the reports on climate science and impacts.

They all agreed that more resources and a clear communications strategy are badly needed. “Despite several years of highlighting the need for effective communications and outreach, we have really made very little headway, and I know that we cannot delay action in this area much longer,” Dr. Pachauri wrote. “If we do, it would be at our own peril.”

Since Revkin wrote this, there is at least one positive sign. The IPCC just released a “Communications Strategy,” drafted at its May Abu Dhabi session, which says many of the right things. The organization will apparently be hiring a Senior Communications Manager and trying to coordinate a mechanism for rapid response. And there is much else in the document to praise—but I also note the following:

There are significant resource implications in communicating IPCC work effectively, and the Panel will require regular updates on the financial implications of implementing the strategy.

Revkin puts it a lot more bluntly: “without more resources from the 194 countries that sponsor the effort, I see scant prospect for concrete improvement.”

It appears that the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report is due out in 2013 and 2014. So basically, the IPCC has about two years to really get together a serious communications mechanism for the moment when it is going to be needed most. Let us hope that the current strategy document is only the beginning, and that dollars will follow good intentions.

The IPCC, like every scientific organization, needs to understand that the work is not over just because you’ve finished doing the science and published it. In fact, the work has only begun.

The phrase, “alarmist hysteria” is showing up repeatedly on the comment threads of just about every article recently posted on climate change. It is the Climate Denial Spin Machine’s version of Baskin-Robbins’ flavor of the month. Climate denier drones like “anonymous” have been programmed to use the phrase in their posts and they are obediently doing so.

Exactly right Badgersouth. The other one they are being encouraged to spread amongst their denier kin is “CAGW”. AGW wasn’t working out for them as well, the links to AGW were all too easily proven. Now they have moved onto a more extreme version Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

It’s good in a way, because it means the end for the deniers the same as it was for the smoking lobbyists.

The fossil fuel lobbyists use exactly the same techniques as the smoking lobbyists , who also happen to be the same people lobying politician & the public today.

■There is no scientific “consensus”;
■There is a scientific “controversy”;
■Other hypotheses are at least as probable;
■Here is a list of “prestige figures” who disagree with the mainstream view;
■One report says one thing, but here’s another saying something else, so who knows where the truth lies?

Then when it is clear they are losing it’s
“ok, we know man is contributing to it, but we don’t know how much it’s affecting us - climate sensitivity”.

Then after it’s clear that man is responsible for the extra warming, it’s moved from ok, it might be AGW…but it’s not catastrophic!! You are being alarmist!!

“Alarmist” being a word the smoking lobbyists worked out a while back is a trigger word for peoples emotions & readiness to act as one smoking lobbyists says here back in the day:

“People generally do not favour action on a non-alarming situation when arguments seem to be balanced on both sides and there is a clear doubt. The weight of impressions on the public must be balanced so people will have doubts and lack motivation to take action. Accordingly, means are needed to get balancing information into the stream from sources that the public will find credible. There is no need for a clear-cut ‘victory’. […] Nurturing public doubts by demonstrating that this is not a clear-cut situation in support of the opponents usually is all that is necessary […]

The lobbyists through their various denier blogs have continuously planted their thought seeds to mention “alarmism” or “alarmists” in virtually every post so no matter how bad things get the deniers will always have something to compare with that’s worse. E.g. It was hotter when the planet was forming!! Temperatures now are nothing!!

Unfortunately, no amount of money is going to overtop the vast sums and political fellow travelership using the clever PR meant to promote business as usual.

Sadly, it is going to take a lot more of groaning earth’s complaints before we all begin to “get it”. Scientific reductionism doesn’t help and explaining that they won’t say what they don’t know doesn’t penetrate most instant gratification-focused understanding. The other “side” has no such restrictions - to things like honesty and probability.

Adolescent namecalling is not restricted, sadly, to those buying improbable infotainment and advertising fluff. We are all capable of it.

I’m not sure there is an urgent need for funding to improve the way this report is communicated. What people really want is transparency, just the facts and how they were determined to be ‘facts’.
In other words, how much is it going to cost to simply ‘open the books’? Certainly it will cost less than the previous attempts to conceal the process, no?

Transparency? There will necessarily have to be greater uncertainty in the form of greater error intervals in the AR5 compared to AR4 because of the problems that have surfaced with the IPCC general circulation models pertaining to ocean heat uptake. There are also newer Greenland ice melt models for example, projecting much less ice melt (1.77 inches of sea level rise by 2100) that have done a much better job in mirroring Greenland’s actual glacial disruption characteristics which old models had exaggerated by as much as 100%. Error intervals will likely be be larger there too as thermal expansion of the oceans may not be as great as first thought based on ocean heat uptake which has paused since 2003. Scientists were startled to see a 10mm drop in sea level rise over an 18 month period after the last sea level rise update from the Colorado State U scientists. Lastly the IPCC has already voted to ignore the IAC recommendation for limiting the use of non-peer reviewed material and the need for clearly identifying and citing non-peer reviewed documentation in AR5. If you are unaware, the use of non-cited non-peer reviewed documentation was one of the reasons that prompted the UN to engage in an independent investigation by the IAC in the first place. While the IPCC bylaws allow them to use non-peer reviewed documentation, the material was not identified as such in AR4 and certainly not identified or mentioned in IPCCPR releases. The sad part is that once again we will first get the Summary for Policy Makers, the spin, before we get the to review the science, and until you examine the science, you can’t be sure if they just put lipstick on the pig as far as following IAC recommendations.

…and if you must know, the AVISO graph you deep-linked to is from the ENVISAT satellite only, which has a well known altimeter drift of -2.2 mm/yr from cal/val, among other issues. Knowledge, that. And your pal Goddard forgot to pick the version which corrects for GIA (Glacial Isostatic Adjustment).

…and on a more general note, it’s nice to change the subject and all that, but I’m still waiting for you to show me that 18-month sea level fall…

“According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Greenland Ice Sheet melt may contribute to global sea level rise at a slower rate than previously believed. The model – which researchers say does a much more accurate job of simulating how ice in Greenland responds to rising temperatures – forecasts that the rise in sea levels attributable to Greenland Ice Sheet melt may end up being half that made by previous estimates.” http://www.sciencepoles.org/news/news_detail/new_model_forecasts_slower_rate_for_greenland_ice_sheets_contribution_to_se/

doing so might educate them, so they avoid checking references or reading what they’re told to link to.

All they feel they can do is repeat a lie again and again until it sticks.

For how this idea came to be popular, you need to go to the Third Reich:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

Much like the Nazis, these randians see the wealthy as Ubermench, if not actually demigods (blessed by The Lord to have wealth and power, obvious since He would not let someone nasty get money [please don’t mention Soros or Al Gore in this crowd as equally blessed, they’re tools of the devil]). Therefore what these wealthy want is Holy and whoever against them The Ultimate Evil.

And just like the Inquisitors, ANYTHING done to vanquish Ultimate Evil is not only good, but the only Moral Cause.

By all means, continue to revel in your feeble efforts. We play two different games here, Alarmists and skeptics. Alarmists apparently want to “save the world” from utter destruction due to man’s nefarious breedin’ and consumin’. Skeptics simply want to prevent Alarmists from doing any harm.

Guess who is winning?

You go ahead and collect all the Academy endorsements you want for your “consensus.” Go ahead and dwell endlessly on imaginary fossil fuel conspiracies preventing your righteous message from being heard. We’ll keep electing Congressmen and women who will oppose you and defund you every chance they get. After all, we wouldn’t want a Democratic Congress and presidency to take over. Oh, wait. That actually happened. Say, how much climate change legislation did you pass when that happened? Oh yeah. None.

The last Pew poll on “climate change” showed that only 34 percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening AND man is responsible for it. Your’e in the minority and will stay that way until we say otherwise.

Correction, those that trust the worlds scientists & scientific institutions to know their stuff & advise us correctly & deniers.

“Alarmists apparently want to “save the world” from utter destruction”

That is a denier misnomer. Please provide an example of any pro agw scientist saying “utter destruction”…strawman.

“Skeptics simply want to prevent Alarmists from doing any harm.”

Skeptics just don’t know any better & have never bothered to really understand the facts or search for them. Deniers on the other hand refuse to accept any evidence that conflicts with their pre-determined views. Often deniers are actually lobbyists or defending their political interests. They will change their mind when paid to do otherwise or their political party changes their mind.

“Guess who is winning?”

Deniers in Australia, Canada & the USA where the majority of the worlds biggest fossil fuel companies are & spend the most lobbying & media money? Because you have lost in the rest of the world.

“Go ahead and dwell endlessly on imaginary fossil fuel conspiracies”

We have evidence of the fact. You don’t have evidence of your conspiracy theory that the worlds climate scientists & scientific institutions are conspiring…..to get more grant money..to earn about as much as a middle income worker? You don’t have evidence there is a plan to de-industrialize the west, you don’t have evidence that it is a communist or socialist plot to create a NWO or one world government & take away your rights.

“We’ll keep electing Congressmen and women who will oppose you and defund you every chance they get.”

As John Stuart Mills once said “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”

Funny how the further away from the major cities & the less educated you are, the more likely you are to be a conservative, hence the red states.

“After all, we wouldn’t want a Democratic Congress and presidency to take over. Oh, wait. That actually happened. Say, how much climate change legislation did you pass when that happened? Oh yeah. None.”

Not from lack of want. Like here in Australia, the bills were blocked by conservatives in all cases, because they are funded by the fossil fuel & mining companies.

“Your’e in the minority and will stay that way until we say otherwise. ”

Reminds me of the nuremburg rallies.

You might be able to con people into voting against proposed AGW action because of your ignorance or political beliefs, but it doesn’t make the science or the issue go away.

It isn’t good enough that deniers use FOI to attempt to hold up science when they can get data freely. It isn’t good enough that they use the lobying might of the fossil fuel companies to pretty much own most conservative politicians in the USA, Canada & Australia. It isn’t good enough that they have their own mainstream prime time propaganda channel (fox news) to spread misinformation to the gullible, it isn’t enough that they have dozens of denier websites that repeat falsifications daily as if the last errors were never proven wrong. And despite being humiliated & proven wrong many times over in major science journals, they need to resort to death threats.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/04/3235561.htm

If the deniers were “winning” as our denier friend Mike Mangan sugests, then they wouldn’t need to resort to any of that.

They could simply present research & fact based science to the major journals & knock the whole thing on the head permanently.

But they know they are wrong & this is all they have got like Mike above suggests. Stop science funding, sweep the problem under the carpet, concentrate on the voting public not science & somehow it will all get better.

Well said. Mangan and other deniers like to quote populist polls as if that somehow negates the science, “The last Pew poll on “climate change” showed that only 34 percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening AND man is responsible for it.”

Add that to the list of fallacies that his comments are replete with: Appeal to Popularity,namely, a proposition is held to be true because it is widely held to be true or is held to be true by some sector of the population.

Mangan and his ilk should read a little history of civilizations of the past with Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ being a good start. Other Diamond volumes are also enlightening.

The biggest trouble as I see it is that these deniers have such narrow minds, geologists who think they can take on oceanographers and engineers who think they know all about atmospheric science and ecology.

I was once an engineer, aviation at sea, but then I went to Uni as a mature and broadened my outlook. Thus it is natural for me to pick up on anything. Right from a kid I was reading every book that crossed my path about the workings of planet earth (and beyond) and the organisms of it and latterly their interactions. It is that last bit, the interactions between the earth’s physical systems and the web of life that these support, as Lovelock explained oh so well, that the deniers show so little recognition of.

Diamond, Dawkins, Dennett, Penrose, Carson, Sagan, Forte, Smolin and Feynman and many others are on my book shelves, laterly joined by those writing both about climate science, Archer, Pierrehumbet, Alley and also those exposing the real villains of the denial movement writers like Oreskes, Romm and Hogan.

I don’t know if there is any correlation between this tunnel vision and home-schooling and special faith based schooling but the gyrations of Art Robinson and his Oregon circus suggests that there may be.

“If the deniers were “winning” as our denier friend Mike Mangan sugests, then they wouldn’t need to resort to any of that. They could simply present research & fact based science to the major journals & knock the whole thing on the head permanently.”

Sadly, the deniers are winning in spite of doing any research & fact based science. It’s a propaganda war, and truth has no place in it for the winners. By the time the evidence is irrefutable, the carbon industries will probably employ the same people to sell us geoengineering solutions.

Sadly Keith, you are right & Mike is right too. The deniers don’t actually have to do any science & they don’t have to conduct any research themselves.

They just have to convince/dupe enough of the voting public that the pro AGW scientists are wrong & we should quarantine their views & science for another generation & time. After the fossil fuel companies have wrung the last cents of profit they can out of the ground & public. Then they will simply buy up all the clean energy solutions & tell everybody they have to use it.

Deniers of the future will no doubt dutifully back them & declare to people who have been arguing for it all along…”get with the program!! Clean energy is the answer”.

Like goldfish that swim to the other side of the tank, forget where they have been & discover a whole new environment on the other side.

“Correction, those that trust the worlds scientists & scientific institutions to know their stuff & advise us correctly & deniers.”

Those who slavishly gulp the Establishment Koolaid because it fits their pre-conceived notion of the world. I was raised in the 60’s and have always questioned authority. After a lifetime of seeing the science establishment change their minds again and again over simple things like dietary fat, caffeine, or the freaking food pyramid we’re supposed to believe that something as vast and as complex as the global climate is now fully understood?

After Climategate exposed how the data is manipulated and how skeptical viewpoints were shut out of publishing I have no reason to believe your “leading climatologists.”

“That is a denier misnomer. Please provide an example of any pro agw scientist saying “utter destruction”…strawman.”
Spare me. I summarize the feelings of everyone from “Death Trains” James Hansen down to my good friend Susan Anderson. You all embrace the farthest outliers of model projections and incorporate them in your daily propaganda. One needs only read a few pages from the completely over the top Joe Romm or Bill McKibben. The Strawman is your argument, Phil. I didn’t say anything about your “scientists” claiming utter destruction.

“We have evidence of the fact.”
Really? And you never see fit to give that evidence to the mainstream media who so willingly carry your water.

Oh, gosh. Here’s one I’ve never heard before. You think conservatives are stupid. Gee, brilliant insight. Also a great motivator in a center-right country like America where conservatives greatly outnumber liberals. Not a good strategy for the minority to tell the majority how stupid they are. Not in a country where you can vote.

“Reminds me of the nuremburg rallies.”
Godwin’s law. Guess you lose once again. You know what you people remind me of? The people Stalin sent to drag the kulaks from their homes to murder. Or worse, the mobs that enforced Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

“we’re supposed to believe that something as vast and as complex as the global climate is now fully understood? ”

Are we supposed to believe that adding billions of tonnes of additional CO2 to that system each year through fossil fuels alone, while simultaneously deforesting does nothing?

“After Climategate exposed how the data is manipulated”

No, it exposed how little deniers knew about data.

“and how skeptical viewpoints were shut out of publishing”

So is Poptechs list of 900 real or not?

“Spare me. I summarize the feelings”

Translation, you lied & exaggerated.

“You all embrace the farthest outliers of model projections and incorporate them in your daily propaganda.”

In the 6 years I have been doing this, I have never seen that. Deniers don’t understand, that long before some fantasy furnace planet you think we are trying to warn of, that many millions of the poorest in the 3rd world countries will be affected & will mobilize. Either by flood, drought or lack of food & water. The refugee & military implications are enormous. Not to mention extinction of some animal life that will have a flow on effect to other animals & eventually us.

Great! This is good news. So you don’t think any AGW scientists are “alarmists”? Because above you said “Alarmists apparently want to “save the world” from utter destruction”. So if scientists are not in your category of alarmists, please define exactly who is? And provide an example of someone who has said “utter destruction”. You are manufacturing lies & you know it.

“Really? And you never see fit to give that evidence to the mainstream media who so willingly carry your water. ”

The media already know. It’s called lobbying & it’s legal in a democratic society. You don’t have access to google? You should try it some time, here’s a hand to get you started.

“Also a great motivator in a center-right country like America where conservatives greatly outnumber liberals.”

When I said above “Like here in Australia,”, I meant…as in..not America. I’m not sure what the voting system is like in Canada, but here in Australia the progressives & conservatives are pretty much 49% each. 51% is considered a landslide. The USA as far as I know doesn’t have a compulsory voting system, but in a country where “conservatives greatly out number liberals” , how did that majority switch allegiance & vote in Obama & Clinton?

A quick google of conservative election wins in the USA shows a win with between 48%-50% of votes. What is your definition of “greatly outnumber”? Minority governments are becoming increasingly more commonplace worldwide as people mistrust BOTH sides.

“Godwin’s law. Guess you lose once again. You know what you people remind me of? The people Stalin ”

And what if the facts support that preconception. A flat-earther may say EXACTLY what you’ve just said. All that info about the earth being round is false because it’s supporting the round-earther’s preconcieved ideas.

“And you never see fit to give that evidence to the mainstream media who so willingly carry your water.”

Yes, it’s been given multiple times:

http://www.ipcc.ch

You see, not having even attempted to hide your lies, you show you’re stupid.

You also admit you’re a conservative.

PS if the conservatives outnumber the liberals, how come you got a black democrat president? Did the conservatives forget how to put an X in a box?

Phil,
Whether or not it’s ‘scientists’ that are forecasting utter destruction, there is no denying that the pro-AGW publicity machine is going way overboard on all of their forecasts. Imo, this has to change because it is clearly undermining the credibility of the message.
The general public are just not listening anymore.

“Whether or not it’s ‘scientists’ that are forecasting utter destruction, there is no denying that the pro-AGW publicity machine is going way overboard on all of their forecasts.”

To have a shot at the extremes in outcomes that some pro agw groups or self interest groups are suggesting,it would only be fair to acknowledge the downplay that denier groups are promoting. That there is no global warming, there is no sea level rise, there is no melting in greenland , the artic or antarctica, the glaciers are increasing in mass, not losing it. We are getting cooler not warmer. The warming that we are experiencing is ENTIRELY natural.

Who is “the pro-agw publicity machine”? Please provide examples.

“this has to change because it is clearly undermining the credibility of the message.”

I agree there has been some exaggeration from some elements on the pro-agw side, it doesn’t help. There is no furnace planet, there is no 100M sea level rise, however, the very small changes to our delicate climate system have been entirely underestimated & downplayed by deniers. Western countries will cope & adapt just fine despite ever increasing insurance premiums,water & power costs. But what of the few billion poor that cannot. They will simply move to the cities or to another country. That creates huge issues. What happens when the oceans reach a tipping point when some creatures cannot form shells? The IPCC have been conservative in their estimates in many cases & from what we hear about the up & coming IPCC report, they plan to continue being very conservative.

“The general public are just not listening anymore.”

I wouldn’t say that. Certainly with every major weather event like floods, droughts, massive snow falls, severe cyclones/hurricanes & tornadoes, people are starting to question it more & more. Whether the event was or wasn’t actually exacerbated by AGW.

The governments in Australia , Canada & the USA might be able to shut down & defund climate science institutes & scientists as Mike Mangan suggests through ignorant voter action & ostrich politics. But it doesn’t stop the rest of the world researching it. The issue will never go away while the problem exists. It’s like holding your hands over your ears while a car alarm is going off. Dulling the sound doesn’t stop the source of the noise.

The extra CO2 in our atmosphere just simply wont go away over night & while we pump ever increasing amounts into the atmosphere, our climate will only get worse. That is why for deniers…..the issue will simply never go away.They will always have this monkey on their back until something is done. It’s so blindingly obvious to those who care to look.

“The extra CO2 in our atmosphere just simply wont go away over night & while we pump ever increasing amounts into the atmosphere, our climate will only get worse. That is why for deniers…..the issue will simply never go away. They will always have this monkey on their back until something is done. It’s so blindingly obvious to those who care to look.”

Very nicely put, but the deniers are well aware of that. Their purpose is simply to delay any action that will affect the profits of their paymasters for as long as they can. They are amoral people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Their task is made easier, because they peddle their lies to an audience that wants to hear them. After all, very few of us actually want to change our lifestyles in the way that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change suggests we should.

Other than making their behavior illegal - which no politician would dare to propose - the deniers are going to keep on winning the propaganda war until the evidence that they have been lying is there for everyone to see. The trouble is, by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

The similarity between you crazies and the jihadis is remarkable. Islam means “to submit.” This is exactly the way you treat anyone who dares question your source of authority. Islam has the Koran, Alarmists have the IPCC. For some odd reason you expect the majority of the citizens of Western Civilization to submit to the declarations of your approved scientists. As if that attitude isn’t repulsive enough, you have to throw in the BigEvilOil conspiracy just like Muslims like to blame the Zionists.

Never let a denier get in the way of a lie, it’s just too important to them. Not that I should be defending Islam, as I am an atheist, but let’s get facts straight. Yeah, I know I know, you aren’t fond of them, but here goes.

“For some odd reason you expect the majority of the citizens of Western Civilization to submit to the declarations of your approved scientists.”

By majority of the citizens of the western world, I gather you mean the USA? Because most of the western world are already making steps to address the problem.

“Russia, Japan, Canada, France and America have pulled out of Kyoto…”

You are just getting around to reading the news of 2005-2006? France are probably leading the way anyway in CO2 reduction, so the point is moot. Also the USA never ratified it. I’m sure if I dig around for another few mins I will expose more lies & ignorance but hey, out of 191 signatories 5 are not there??! Oh nooooo, wave our hands in the air in panic.

That is what we are lambasting you for. Not for questioning authority (I question Senator Inholfe, Tim Ball and Chris Monckton. All authorities). But for refusing to accept any facts that don’t accord to your beliefs.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

Current temperatures have gone up 33C because of their presence, showing a sensitivity of 3x the CO2’s effect because of water vapour feedbacks.

The trend of temperature is in accord with a sensitivity of 3C per doubling of CO2.

The variation of the trend is almost entirely explained by CO2’s growth (78%).

Facts.

You refuse them.

Why?

They are not “authority” any more than your thermometer telling you your temperature is 36C is an authority.

However, you WILLNEVER question the authority of, for example, Anthony Watts.

Aussie fascist Richard Glover believes that “climate deniers” should be tattooed so they can be identified for future ostracization… http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-dangers-of-boneheaded-beliefs-20110602-1fijg.html

Such is the power of the mining & fossil fuel industries. They now have their own channel ( channel 10) just like fox. They ow the conservative party. Plus 90% of the papers are owned by deniers, plus 99% of the talk back stations owned & hosted by deniers.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.